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Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch pronunciation: (help·info)) (March 30, 1853 – July 29, 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. His paintings and drawings include some of the world's best known, most popular and most expensive pieces.
Van Gogh spent his early life working for a firm of art dealers and after a brief spell as a teacher, became a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as an artist until 1880. Initially he only worked with somber colors, until an encounter in Paris with Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism, whose brighter colours and style of painting he developed into a uniquely recognizable style, which was fully developed during time spent at Arles.
He produced more than 2,000 works, including around 900 paintings and 1100 d...

Sigmund Freud (German pronunciation: ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 (birth time source: Astrodatabank) – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist who became known as the founding father of psychoanalysis.
Freud qualified as a Doctor of Medicine at the University of Vienna in 1881, and then carried out research into cerebral palsy, aphasia and microscopic neuroanatomy at the Vienna General Hospital. He was appointed a University lecturer in neuropathology in 1885 and became a Professor in 1902.
In creating psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association (in which patients report their thoughts without reservation and in whi...

Nikola Tesla (Serbian Cyrillic: Никола Тесла) (10 July 1856 - 7 January 1943) was an inventor, physicist, mechanical engineer and electrical engineer. He was born an ethnic Serb subject of the Austrian Empire and later became an American citizen. Tesla is best known for his many revolutionary contributions to the discipline of electricity and magnetism in the late 19th and early 20th century. Tesla's patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current electric power (AC) systems, including the polyphase power distribution systems and the AC motor, with which he helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution.
After his demonstration of wireless communication in 1893 and after being the victor in t...

Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (October 20, 1854 – November 10, 1891) was a French poet, born in Charleville. His influence on modern literature, music and art has been pervasive.
Early life and work
Arthur Rimbaud was born into the provincial middle class of Charleville (now part of Charleville-Mézières) in the Ardennes département in northeastern France. He was the second child of Captain Frédéric and Vitalie Rimbaud (née Cuif). As a boy he was a restless but brilliant student. By the age of fifteen he had won many prizes and composed original verses and dialogues in Latin. In 1870 his teacher Georges Izambard became Rimbaud's literary mentor and his original French verses began to improve rapidly.
He frequently ran away from home and may have briefly joined the Paris Commune of 1871...

Johann Sebastian Bach (21 March 1685 O.S. or 31 mars N.S. – 28 July 1750 N.S.) was a prolific German composer and organist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity. Although he introduced no new forms, he enriched the prevailing German style with a robust contrapuntal technique, a control of harmonic and motivic organisation from the smallest to the largest scales, and the adaptation of rhythms and textures from abroad, particularly Italy and France. He is regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.
Revered for their intellectual depth and technical and artistic beauty, J.S. Bach's works include the Brandenburg concerti, the Goldberg Variations, the keyboard...

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and short story writer. Known for his barbed wit, he was one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. As the result of a famous trial, he suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years of hard labour after being convicted of the offence of "gross indecency". The scholar H. Montgomery Hyde suggests this term implies homosexual acts not amounting to buggery in British legislation of the time....

Rudolf Steiner (25 February 1861 (birth time source: Astrodatabank, date in question) – 30 March 1925), born in Donji Kraljevec, Croatia, was an Austrian philosopher, literary scholar, educator, artist, playwright, social thinker, and esotericist. He was the founder of Anthroposophy, Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, anthroposophical medicine, and the new artistic form of Eurythmy.
He characterized anthroposophy as follows:
“ Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the spiritual in the human being to the spiritual in the universe…. Anthroposophists are those who experience, as an essential need of life, certain questions on the nature of the human being and the universe, just as one experiences hunger and thirst. ”
Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism...

François-Marie Arouet (21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, deist and philosopher known for his wit, philosophical sport, and defense of civil liberties, including freedom of religion and the right to a fair trial. He was an outspoken supporter of social reform despite strict censorship laws in France and harsh penalties for those who broke them. A satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize Christian Church dogma and the French institutions of his day....

Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603) was Queen of England, Queen of France (in name only), and Queen of Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. She is sometimes referred to as The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, and was immortalised by Edmund Spenser as the Faerie Queene. Elizabeth I was the fifth and final monarch of the Tudor dynasty (the other Tudor monarchs having been her grandfather Henry VII, her father Henry VIII, her half-brother Edward VI, and her half-sister Mary I). She reigned for about 44 years, during a period marked by increases in English power and influence worldwide, as well as great religious turmoil within England.
Elizabeth's reign is referred to as the Elizabethan era or the Golden Age of Elizabeth. Playwrights William Shakespeare, Chr...

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (IPA: ) (5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a popular 19th-century French writer. He is one of the fathers of the modern short story. A protege of Flaubert, Maupassant's short stories are characterized by their economy of style and their efficient effortless dénouement. He also wrote six short novels. A number of his stories often denote the futility of war and the innocent civilians who get crushed in it - many are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s.
Maupassant was most likely born at the Château de Miromesnil, near Dieppe in the Seine-Maritime department. The Maupassants were an old Lorraine family who had settled in Normandy in the middle of the 18th century. In 1846 his father had married Laure Le Poittevin. With her brother Alfred, she...

Prince George of Cambridge (George Alexander Louis; born 22 July 2013 {George de Cambridge's horoscope} is the only child of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, as well as the only grandchild of Charles, Prince of Wales. He is third in line to succeed his great-grandmother, Elizabeth II, to the thrones of the Commonwealth realms, following his grandfather and father.
Birth
On 3 December 2012, St James's Palace announced that the Duchess was expecting the couple's first child. The announcement was made earlier in the pregnancy than is traditional as she had been admitted to hospital with severe morning sickness.
A stone building.
The Duke took two weeks' paterni...

Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (October 27, 1858 (birth time source: Astrodatabank) – January 6, 1919), also known as T.R., and to the public (but never to friends and intimates) as Teddy, was the twenty-sixth President of the United States, and a leader of the Republican Party and of the Progressive Movement. He became the youngest President in United States history at the age of 42. He served in many roles including Governor of New York, historian, naturalist, explorer, author, and soldier. Roosevelt is most famous for his personality: his energy, his vast range of interests and achievements, his model of masculinity, and his "cowboy" persona. His last name, often mispronounced, per Roosevelt, is correctly pronounced "Rosavelt" (IPA: ).
As Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Navy, he prepared fo...

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Russian: Анто́н Па́влович Че́хов, IPA: ) was a Russian short story writer and playwright. He was born in Taganrog, southern Russia, on 29 January 1860, and died of tuberculosis at the health spa of Badenweiler, Germany, on 15 July 1904. His playwriting career produced four classics, while his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Chekhov practiced as a doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife," he once said, "and literature is my mistress".
Chekhov renounced the theatre after the disastrous reception of The Seagull in 1896; but the play was revived to acclaim by Konstantin Stan...

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a Scottish born author most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction, and the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, historical novels, plays and romances, poetry, and non-fiction.
Life
Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland, to an English father, Charles Altamont Doyle, and an Irish mother, Mary Foley, who had married in 1855. Although he is now referred to as 'Conan Doyle', the origin of this compound surname is uncertain. Conan Doyle's father was an artist, as were his paternal uncles (one of whom was Richard Doyle), and...

Ivan IV Vasilyevich (Russian: Иван IV Васильевич) (August 25, 1530, Moscow – March 18, 1584, Moscow) was the Grand Duke of Muscovy from 1533 to 1547 and was the first ruler of Russia to assume the title of tsar (or czar). His long reign saw the conquest of Tartary and Siberia and subsequent transformation of Russia into a multiethnic and multiconfessional state. This tsar retains his place in the Russian tradition simply as Ivan Grozny (Russian: Ива́н Гро́зный listen (help·info)), which is traditionally translated into English as Ivan the Terrible.
Early reign
Ivan (or Ioann, as his name is rendered in Church Slavonic) was a lon...

Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (December 22, 1858 – November 29, 1924) was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire. Some of his melodies, such as "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi and "Nessun dorma" from Turandot, have become part of modern culture.
Early life
Puccini was born in Lucca in Tuscany, Italy into a family with five generations of musical history behind them. His father died when he was five years old, and he was sent to study with his uncle Fortunato Magi, who considered him to be a poor and undisciplined student. Later, Puccini took the position of church organist and choir master in Lucca, but it was not until he saw a performance ...

Antoni Gaudí i Cornet (Riudoms or Reus, 25 June 1852 – Barcelona, 10 June 1926) – sometimes referred to by the Spanish translation of his name, Antonio Gaudí – was a Spanish architect from Catalonia, who belonged to the Modernisme (Art Nouveau) movement and was famous for his unique style and highly individualistic designs.
Birth and childhood
Where he was born
Gaudí was born in the province of Tarragona in southern Catalonia, Spain in 1852. While there is some dispute as to his birthplace – official documents state that he was born in the town of Reus, whereas others claim he was born in Riudoms, a small village 3 miles from Reus. –, it is certain that he was baptized in Reus a day after his birth. The artist's parents, Francesc Gaudí Serra and Antònia Cornet Bertran, both came fr...

Robert Louis (Balfour) Stevenson (November 13, 1850–December 3, 1894), was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of Neo-romanticism in English literature. He was greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling and Vladimir Nabokov. Most modernist writers dismissed him, however, because he was popular and did not write within their narrow definition of literature. It is only recently that critics have begun to look beyond Stevenson's popularity and allow him a place in the canon. He prepared for a law career but never practiced. He traveled frequently, partly in search of better climates for his tuberculosis, which would eventually contribute to his death at age 44.
Early life
Stevenson was born Robert...

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (7 June 1848 (birth time source: Didier Geslain – 9 May 1903) was a leading Post-Impressionist artist. Best known as a painter, his bold experimentation with colouring led directly to the Synthetist style of modern art while his expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way to Primitivism and the return to the pastoral. He was also an influential exponent of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms.
Life
Paul Gauguin was born in Paris, France to journalist Clovis Gauguin and half-Peruvian Aline Maria Chazal, the daughter of socialist leader Flora Tristan. In 1851 the family left Paris for Peru, motivated by the political climate of the period. Clovis died on the voyage, leavi...

North West, born on June 15, 2013 in Los Angeles Cedars Sinai Hospital, California (birth time source: birth certificate on several Internet web sites), is the daugther of US socialite Kim Kardashian and her boyfriend US rapper Kanye West....

Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain (24 April 1856 – 23 July 1951), generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain, was a French general, later Chief of State of Vichy France (Chef de l'État Français), from 1940 to 1944.
Due to his military leadership in World War I, he was viewed as a hero in France, but his actions during World War II resulted in a conviction and death sentence for treason, which was commuted to life imprisonment by Charles de Gaulle. In modern France, he is generally considered a traitor, and pétainisme is a derogatory term for certain reactionary policies.
Born in Cauchy-à-la-Tour (in the Pas-de-Calais département, in the north of France) in 1856. He joined the French Army in 1876 and attended the St Cyr Military Academy in 1887 and the École Supérieur...

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne-Delecroix (IPA pronunciation: ) (February 28, 1533–September 13, 1592) was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance. Montaigne is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. He became famous for his effortless ability to merge serious intellectual speculation with casual anecdotes and autobiography — and his massive volume Essais (translated literally as "Attempts") contains, to this day, some of the most widely influential essays ever written. Montaigne had a direct influence on writers the world over, from William Shakespeare to Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Friedrich Nietzsche to Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
In his own time, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author. His tendency in his essays to diverge into anecdotes...

Marcus Tullius Cicero (Classical Latin pronounced , usually pronounced /ˈsɪsəroʊ/ in English; January 3, 106 BC – December 7, 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and philosopher. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.
Cicero is generally seen as one of the most versatile minds of Roman culture and his writing the paragon of Classical Latin. He introduced the Romans to the chief schools of Greek philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary. An impressive orator and successful lawyer, Cicero likely thought his political career his most important achievement. However, today he is appreciated primarily for his humanism and philosophical and political writings. His voluminous correspondence, much of ...

Gustav Mahler (July 7, 1860 – May 18, 1911) was a Bohemian-Austrian composer and conductor.
Mahler was best known during his own lifetime as one of the leading orchestral and operatic conductors of the day. He has since come to be acknowledged as among the most important late-romantic composers, although during his lifetime his music was never fully accepted by the musical establishment. With the exceptions of an early piano quartet, Das Klagende Lied, an early cantata, and Totenfeier, the original tone-poem version of the first movement of the second symphony, Mahler's entire output consists of only two genres: symphony and song. Besides the nine completed numbered symphonies, his principal works are the song cycles Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (usually rendered as 'Songs of a Wayfa...

George Frideric Handel (Friday 23 February 1685 (5 March New Style) – Saturday 14 April 1759) was a German-born British Baroque composer who was a leading composer of concerti grossi, operas and oratorios. Born in Germany as Georg Friederich Händel (IPA: ), he dwelt during most of his adult life in England, becoming a subject of the British crown on 22 January 1727. His most famous works are Messiah, an oratorio set to texts from the King James Bible, Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks. Drawing on the techniques of the great composers of the Italian Baroque, as well as the music of Henry Purcell, he deeply influenced in his turn many composers who came after him, including Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and his work helped lead the transition from the Baroque to the Classical era...

Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish-born novelist who spent most of his adult life in Britain.
He is regarded as one of the greatest English novelists, which is even more notable because he did not learn to speak English well until he was in his 20s (albeit always with a Polish accent).
Conrad is recognized as a master prose stylist. Some of his works have a strain of romanticism, but more importantly he is recognized as an important forerunner of Modernist literature.
Conrad's narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many writers, including Ernest Hemingway, D.H. Lawrence, Graham Greene, William S. Burroughs, Joseph Heller, John Maxwell Coetzee as well as Jerzy Kosiński and inspired such films ...

Lizzie Andrew Borden (July 19, 1860 – June 1, 1927) was a New England spinster who was the central figure in the axe murders of her father and stepmother on August 4, 1892 in Fall River, Massachusetts, in the United States. The slayings, trial, and the following trial by media became a cause célèbre, and the fame of the incident has endured in American pop culture and criminology. Although Lizzie Borden was acquitted, no one else was ever tried, and she has remained notorious in American folklore. Dispute over the identity of the killer or killers continues to this day.
The Murders
On August 4, 1892, Lizzie Borden's father, Andrew J. Borden, and her step-mother, Abby Borden, were murdered in the family home. The only other people present at the residence at the time were Lizzie and the...

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856–February 3, 1924), was the twenty-eighth President of the United States. A devout Presbyterian and leading intellectual of the Progressive Era, he served as president of Princeton University then became the reform governor of New Jersey in 1910. With Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft dividing the Republican vote, Wilson was elected President as a Democrat in 1912. He proved highly successful in leading a Democratic Congress to pass major legislation including the Federal Trade Commission, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Underwood Tariff, the Federal Farm Loan Act and most notably the Federal Reserve System.
Re-elected narrowly in 1916, his second term centered on World War I. He tried to negotiate a peace in Europe, but when Germany began...

Lou Andreas-Salomé (born Louise von Salomé or Luíza Gustavovna Salomé, Луиза Густавовна Саломе; 12 February 1861 – 5 January 1937) was a Russian-born psychoanalyst and author. Her diverse intellectual interests led to friendships with a broad array of distinguished western luminaries, including Nietzsche, Wagner, Freud, and Rilke.
Life
Early years
Lou Salomé was born in St. Petersburg to an army general and his wife. Salomé was their only daughter; she had five brothers. Although she would later be attacked by the Nazis as a "Finnish Jewess," her parents were actually of French Huguenot and Northern German descent.
Seeking an education beyond a typical wo...

Jean Léon Jaurès—full name Auguste Marie Joseph Jean Léon Jaurès—(September 3, 1859 (birth time source: Didier Geslain) – July 31, 1914) was a French Socialist leader. He was one of the first social democrats: within the Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO), he opposed Jules Guesde's refusal of socialist participation in bourgeois governments. .
Early career
The son of an unsuccessful businessman, he was born at Castres (Tarn), and educated at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and the École normale supérieure. Jaurès took his degree as associate in philosophy in 1881; after teaching philosophy for two years at the lycée of Albi, he lectured at the University of Toulouse. He was elected Republican deputy for the département of Tarn in 1885. In 1889, after unsuccessfully contesti...

John Dee (July 13, 1527–1609) was a noted English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, occultist, and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I. He also devoted much of his life to alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy.
Dee straddled the worlds of science and magic just as they were becoming distinguishable. One of the most learned men of his time, he had lectured to crowded halls at the University of Paris when still in his early twenties. John was an ardent promoter of mathematics, a respected astronomer and a leading expert in navigation, having trained many of those who would conduct England's voyages of discovery (he coined the term "British Empire").
At the same time, he immersed himself deeply in magic and Hermetic philosophy, devoting the last third of his life alm...

Ferdinand Foch OM GCB (October 2, 1851 – March 20, 1929) was a French soldier, military theorist, and writer credited with possessing "the most original and subtle mind in the French Army" in the early 20th century. He served as general in the French Army during World War I and was made Marshal of France in its final year, 1918. Shortly after the start of the Spring Offensive, Germany's final attempt to win the war, Foch was chosen as supreme commander of the allied armies, a position that he held until November 11, 1918, when he accepted the German Surrender.
He advocated peace terms that would make Germany unable to ever pose a threat to France again. His words after the Treaty of Versailles, "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for 20 years," would prove prophetic.
Early life
...

Georges-Pierre Seurat (December 2, 1859 (birth time source: Didier Geslain) – March 29, 1891) was a French painter and the founder of Neo-impressionism. His large work Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is one of the icons of 19th century painting.
Life
Seurat was born to a well-off family in Paris. His father was a legal official and a native of Champagne; his mother was Parisian. Seurat first studied art with Justin Lequien, a sculptor. Seurat attended the École des Beaux-Arts in 1878 and 1879. After a year of service at Brest military academy, he returned to Paris in 1880. He shared a small studio on the Left Bank with two student friends before moving to a studio of his own. For the next two years he devoted himself to mastering the art of black and white drawing. He...

Emanuel Swedenborg (help·info) (born Emanuel Swedberg; January 29, 1688 – March 29, 1772) was a Swedish scientist, philosopher, Christian mystic, and theologian. Swedenborg had a prolific career as an inventor and scientist. At the age of fifty-six he entered into a spiritual phase, in which he experienced dreams and visions. This culminated in a spiritual awakening, where he claimed he was appointed by the Lord to write a heavenly doctrine to reform Christianity. He claimed that the Lord had opened his eyes, so that from then on he could freely visit heaven and hell, and talk with angels, demons, and other spirits. For the remaining 28 years of his life, he wrote and published 18 theological works, of which the best known was Heaven and Hell (1758) , and several unpublished theological wo...

Pierre Curie (Paris, France, May 15, 1859 – April 19, 1906, Paris) was a French physicist, a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism, piezoelectricity and radioactivity.
He shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics with his wife, Maria Skłodowska-Curie (Marie Curie), and Henri Becquerel, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."
Pierre Curie was born in Paris, where his father, Eugène, was a general medical practitioner, on May 15, 1859. He received his early education at home before entering the Faculty of Sciences at the Sorbonne. He gained his Licenciateship in Physics in 1878 and continued as a demonstrator in the physics laboratory until 1882 when he was placed i...

Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (March 19, 1848–January 13, 1929) was an American farmer, teamster, sometime buffalo hunter, officer of the law in various Western frontier towns, gambler, saloon-keeper, and miner. He is best known for his participation in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, along with Doc Holliday, and two of his brothers, Virgil Earp and Morgan Earp.
Wyatt Earp has become an iconic figure in American folk history. He is the major subject of various movies, TV shows, biographies and works of fiction.
Early life
Main article: Wyatt Earp's family
On July 30, 1840, widower Nicholas Porter Earp wed local girl Virginia Ann Cooksey in Hartford, Kentucky. This second marriage for Nicholas produced eight children. Wyatt Earp was born in Monmouth, Illinois, on March 19, 1848. Wyatt Ear...

Romulus (c. 771 BC—c. 717 BC) and Remus (c. 771 BC—c. 753 BC) (birth time source: Astrodatabank) are the traditional founders of Rome, appearing in Roman mythology as the twin sons of the priestess Rhea Silvia, fathered by the god of war, Mars. According to the tradition recorded as history by Plutarch and Livy, Romulus served as the first King of Rome.
Romulus slew Remus over a dispute about which one of the two brothers had the support of the local gods to rule the new city and give it his name. After founding Rome, Romulus not only created the Roman Legions and the Roman Senate, but also added citizens to his new city by abducting the women of the neighboring Sabine tribes, which resulted in the mixture of the Sabines and Romans into one people. Romulus would become ancient Rome's gr...

René Jules Lalique was born in Ay, Marne, France on April 6, 1860 (birth time source: Didier Geslain), and died May 5, 1945.
He was a glass designer, renowned for his stunning creations of perfume bottles, vases, jewellery, chandeliers, clocks, and, in the latter part of his life, automobile hood ornaments. The firm he founded is still active.
At age 16, he apprenticed with the Parisian jeweller, Louis Aucoc. Then from 1878-1880 he attended Sydenham Art College in London, England. After returning to France, he worked for Aucoc, Cartier, Boucheron and others.
In 1882 he became a freelance designer for several top jewellery houses in Paris and four years later established his own jewellery workshop. By 1890, Lalique was recognized as one of France's foremost Art Nouveau jewellery de...

Ignacy Jan Paderewski GBE (November 18, 1860 - June 29, 1941) was a Polish pianist, composer, diplomat and politician, and the third Prime Minister of Poland. He is sometimes referred to by the German version of his name Ignaz Paderewski.
Ignacy Jan Paderewski was born in the village of Kurylovka (Kuryłówka) in the province of Podolia, then in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine). His father was an administrator of large estates. His mother, Poliksena (née Nowicka), died several months after Paderewski was born, and he was brought up by his distant relatives.
From his early childhood, Paderewski was interested in music. Initially he took piano lessons with a private tutor. At the age of 12, in 1872, he went to Warsaw and was admitted to the Warsaw Conservatorium. After graduating in...

Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel (March 18, 1858 – September 30, 1913) was a German inventor, famous for the invention of the Diesel engine.
Early life
Rudolf Diesel was born in Paris in 1858. His parents were Bavarian immigrants. Rudolf Diesel was educated at Munich Polytechnic. After graduation he was employed as a refrigerator engineer. However, his true love lay in engine design. Rudolf Diesel designed many heat engines, including a solar-powered air engine.
After graduation, he had success for two years as a machinist and designer in Winterthur, Switzerland. After this, he returned to Paris, where he was employed as a refrigeration engineer at Linde Refrigeration Enterprises. His early research into fuel efficiency led him to build a "steam engine" using ammonia vapour. Under test,...

Theo van Gogh (May 1, 1857 – January 25, 1891) was the younger brother of the painter Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) and a successful art dealer. Beginning in 1880, Theo's unfailing financial support allowed his brother to devote himself entirely to painting.
Like his elder brother Vincent, Theodorus van Gogh, who was best known by the familiar form of his name Theo, was born in Groot-Zundert, in the province of Brabant in The Netherlands, son of Theodorus van Gogh and Anna Cornelia Carbentus.
Business
Vincent worked for some years at the Dutch (The Hague) office of the Parisian art dealers Goupil & Cie, and Theo joined the Brussels office on January 1, 1873 as their youngest employee. After Vincent was transferred to the London office, Theo moved to the office in The Hague, where ...

George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856–2 November 1950) was a world-renowned Irish author. Born in Dublin, he moved to London when he turned twenty. His first success was as a music and literary critic, but he was drawn to drama and authored more than sixty plays during his career. Typically his work is leavened by a delightful vein of comedy, but nearly all of it bears earnest messages Shaw hoped his audiences would embrace.
Politically an ardent socialist, he wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society and became an accomplished orator in furtherance of its causes. Those included gaining equal political rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthful lifestyles.
Shaw married Charlott...

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (24 May 1686 – 16 September 1736) was a German physicist and engineer who worked most of his life in the Dutch Republic. The °F Fahrenheit scale of temperature is named after him. This was used long before the Celsius scale.
Fahrenheit was born in Gdańsk / Danzig in Poland on 14 May 1686. The Fahrenheit family were merchants that had moved from one Hanseatic League city to the other. Fahrenheit's great-grandfather had lived in Rostock, although research suggests that the Fahrenheit family originated in Hildesheim. Daniel's grandfather Reinhold Fahrenheit vom Kneiphof moved from Kneiphof (Königsberg) to Danzig and settled there as a merchant in 1650. Father Daniel Fahrenheit married Concordia (widowed name, Runge), daughter of the well-known Danzig business...

Pierre de Ronsard, commonly referred to as Ronsard (September 11, 1524 – December, 1585), was a French poet and "prince of poets" (as his own generation in France called him). He was born at the Manoir de la Possonnière, in the village of Couture-sur-Loir, Loir-et-Cher.
His family is said to have come from the predominantly Romanian provinces to the north of the Danube (provinces with which the Crusades had given France much intercourse) in the first half of the 14th century. Baudouin de Ronsard or Rossart was the founder of the French branch of the house, and made his mark in the early stages of the Hundred Years' War. The poet's father was named Louys de Ronsard, and his mother was Jeanne de Chaudrier, of a family not only noble in itself but well connected. Pierre was the youngest so...

Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM (9 May 1860 – 19 June 1937), more commonly known as J. M. Barrie, was a Scottish novelist and dramatist. He is best remembered for creating Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up, whom he based on his friends, the Llewelyn Davies boys. He is also credited with the popularisation of the name "Wendy", which was little-known in either Britain or America before he gave it to the heroine of Peter Pan. He was made a baronet in 1913; his baronetcy was not inherited.
Childhood and Adolescence
Barrie was born to a family of Scottish weavers in Kirriemuir, Angus, the ninth child of ten. When he was six, his brother David, his mother's favourite, died in a skating accident on the eve of his 14th birthday. His mother never recovered from the loss, and i...

Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof (born Eliezer Samenhof, December 15, 1859 – April 14, 1917) was an ophthalmologist, philologist, Zionist and the inventor of Esperanto, a constructed language designed for international communication.
As of 1975, Esperanto was taught in 600 schools to 20,000 students per year; and there were about 100 journals and 7500 books written in Esperanto, including translations from 65 languages. In addition, it had by that time been used in more than 700 international conferences. As of 2000, per Cambridge Encyclopedia, it had somewhere between 1 and 15 million speakers, according to sources referenced.
Life
Zamenhof was born on December 15, 1859 in the town of Bialystok (now in Poland, then part of the Russian Empire) to parents of Lithuanian Jewish descent. He cons...